Big Decision Coming?

     From the Washington Post:

With the Supreme Court only days away from major rulings on same-sex marriage, President Obama faces the prospect of having to make his own difficult decisions about the definition of wedlock. ... 

Obama’s choices on federal benefits arise from the other case, in which the justices are expected to determine the constitutionality of a key provision of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited the federal government from making benefits available to same-sex couples. ... 

If the Supreme Court overturns the Defense of Marriage Act, full benefits would be available to same-sex couples who marry and live in the dozen states that legally recognize their relationships. But legally married gay couples that live in states that don’t recognize their marriages would be ineligible for a range of federal benefits.

Advocates say Obama could eliminate the discrepancy with an executive order or new regulations setting a couple’s “place of celebration” as the deciding factor in whether the U.S. government recognizes a marriage for the purposes of providing benefits. ... 

Only one section of the law is under challenge, and it might yet be upheld. Another section states that no state “shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding” of any other state “respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage.” ... 

“There will be tremendous pressure on the White House and on the president personally to move very quickly to implement the judgement and to implement it broadly,” said Richard Socarides, a longtime gay rights activist who was an adviser in the Bill Clinton White House. ...

“Thirty days is what he’s got,” Socarides added. “These are real people suffering real injury. If anybody tries to argue that they need six months or a year, there are going to be riots in the streets.”